Tag: Antonio McDyess

Mike Monroe: Health is more vital than top seed

There’s panic in South Texas.

With key players battling injuries, the Spurs have lost four straight games.

First place in the Western Conference no longer seems certain.

Suddenly sizzling, the Lakers are in hot pursuit, a once-daunting gap narrowing.

Should the Spurs drop into second place in the West, a segment of their fans will blame Gregg Popovich for being too cautious with players nursing aches and pains when Monday’s game against the Trail Blazers arrived.

Second-guessers insist Tony Parker and Antonio McDyess would have guaranteed victory in that game. After all, a lineup that included deep reserves Danny Green, Chris Quinn and Steve Novak nearly pulled out a victory.

This is a fan’s logic and ignores reality.

Would George Hill have been as aggressive at the offensive end had Parker played Monday?

Would McDyess have defended LaMarcus Aldridge more effectively than Tiago Splitter?

Would the full lineup have defended more ferociously than the outfit Popovich had on the court in the third quarter, when Portland scored only nine points?

The more important question: Is one victory in late March worth risking further damage to aggravating injuries that need to heal by mid-April?

Ask Popovich about the importance of the No. 1 seed, and the response never varies: Nobody would turn down home-court advantage, but it’s not as important as being healthy.

History proves this. The Rockets were a No. 6 seed in 1995, when Hakeem Olajuwon missed 10 games and Clyde Drexler joined the team after a Valentine’s Day trade and had to work through some nagging injuries of his own before gaining traction with his new team.

No dyed-in-the-wool Spurs fan has forgotten how little home-court advantage meant in the conference finals, when the Rockets won three times at the Alamodome and eliminated the Spurs in six games.

A No. 1 seed nearly guarantees advancement past the first round, but not always. Since the league adopted a 16-team postseason format, beginning with the 1983-84 playoffs, No. 1 seeds are 51-3 in the first round.

No. 2 seeds have been nearly as successful in the first round. Only five No. 2 seeds have failed to advance.

It’s more important to examine the rate of success for No. 1 seeds in conference finals. The home-court advantage has been important, but hardly vital.

Since the 16-team format was adopted, 16 No. 1 seeds have emerged from 27 Western finals; 16 from 27 Eastern finals.

That’s hardly the sort of empirical evidence that would persuade a coach to throw caution to the wind in pursuit of a 59.3 percent edge.

In their four championship runs, the Spurs twice had the No. 1 seed in the West — in 1999 and 2003. Phoenix was the West’s No. 1 seed in 2005, Dallas in 2007.

A Spurs lead once seen as insurmountable at the top of the West seems precarious with eight games left, their magic number stuck on six.

The biggest problem with the magic number?

The Spurs can’t wave a wand and make the Lakers lose.

Los Angeles is 15-1 since the All-Star break. There is no good reason to believe the Lakers can’t close out the regular season with nine more victories.

To preserve the top seed, the Spurs will have to do the heavy lifting on their own, possibly needing to win six of their final eight.

Isn’t that how Popovich would prefer they get it?

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Spurs can take foot off gas, but when?

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Now that the Spurs have locked up the top seed in the Western Conference, rendering the final three games of the season close to meaningless, coach Gregg Popovich has decisions to make about how soon to start resting some of his older players.

Thirty-something starters like Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Antonio McDyess might anticipate a night off before the end of the regular season, but perhaps not right away.

“If there’s a chance to give somebody a break, we’d probably do it,” said Popovich, whose team next plays Saturday at home against Utah. “At the same time, we watch everybody’s minutes all year long. We don’t have anybody that’s been overplayed, so it’s not really a huge concern.”

The question of when to take the foot off the gas will certainly be a topic of conversation in coaches’ meetings for the next few days.

At the heart of the issue is the old question of rest vs. rust. In the past, Popovich has preferred to give his older players ample time to recharge at the end of the season, and almost certainly will again at some point this year.

Still, with 10 days between clinching the West on Wednesday and the possible start of the first round April 16, there is a danger in squandering some of the momentum accumulated during the three-game winning streak, should they downshift too quickly.

“This is the time of year where everybody who is going to be in the playoffs wants to go in with momentum,” Popovich said.

Duncan, who turns 35 on April 25, remains a particularly interesting case. Normally, Popovich would jump to give his captain as much rest as possible entering the postseason.

But with Duncan coming off a sprained ankle that cost him four games in late March and early April, he could probably use some time to maintain the groove he’s been working on since returning.

In the past five games, Duncan has averaged 16 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.2 blocks while shooting 64.6 percent (31 of 48). In the three games Duncan played more than 30 minutes, he averaged 20 points and 10.7 rebounds.

“I think his rhythm is coming back,” Popovich said. “He’s making some jumpers. I think he’s doing OK.”

NEW MEANING TO GREEN WEEK: Locking up best record in the Western Conference put quite a few extra dollars in the players’ pockets.

From the league’s $12 million playoff pool, $302,841 goes to the teams that compile the best records in each conference. The second-place teams in both conferences get $243,411 apiece.

The Spurs’ seventh-place finish last season got them just $179,092. Beating the Mavericks in the first round earned them another $213,095.

There is a significant financial incentive for the Spurs to lock up best record in the league in their final three games. Should they finish with a better record than the Chicago Bulls, the only Eastern team that can surpass their 60 victories, another $346,105 will go into their playoff kitty, for a total of $648,946 before a single playoff game is played.

Express-News staff writer Mike Monroe contributed to this report.

Splitter, Hill have been bright spots in skid

Tiago Splitter has long since ditched the GPS he needed to find the Spurs’ practice facility back in training camp. He has discovered a few places in San Antonio for good Mexican food, though he admits he sometimes prefers to stay in for his wife’s home-cooked paella.

In an even more significant development for the prized rookie center, Splitter is beginning to feel at home in an NBA arena. And he no longer needs a GPS to find playing time.

For the first time, Splitter has begun to feel like a card-carrying member of the San Antonio Spurs.

“I’m getting more confident and feeling like I’m part of the team,” the 25-year-old Brazilian said.

George Hill has been a key member of the Spurs for two-plus seasons already. Unlike Splitter, who had been searching for a feeling he hadn’t yet experienced, Hill’s recent transformation has been about locating a feeling he once had but lost.

“It’s been in my head that I need to get back to being aggressive,” Hill, a 6-foot-3 reserve guard, said after totaling 57 points the past two games.

The downside of the Spurs’ recent four-game slide is evident in the NBA standings. The Los Angeles Lakers have crept within 31/2 games of the top spot in the Western Conference. Chicago looms within 31/2 games in the race for the NBA’s top overall record.

If there is an upside to a losing streak, it is this:

Awarded playing time he might not have found with Tim Duncan healthy, Splitter suddenly looks like a credible NBA big man. Given the freedom and confidence to seek out his own points, Hill again looks like the kind of incendiary bench spark that helps win playoff series.

Splitter had appeared in just 47 of the first 68 games and seemed ticketed for a string of postseason Did-Not-Plays, before Duncan went down with a left ankle sprain March 21 against Golden State. In the past five games replacing the Spurs icon, four of them starts, the 6-foot-11 Splitter has averaged 9.2 points and 8.4 rebounds in 27:50.

“You forget he was the best player in Europe the last couple years,” center DeJuan Blair said. “Now he’s finding his way.”

In Monday’s 100-92 loss to Portland, with Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and Antonio McDyess also in street clothes, Splitter at last found his way onto the court in the fourth quarter of a tight game.

Spurs guard George Hill has scored 57 points over the past two games, with one or both star guards, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, on the bench. (Edward A. Ornelas/Express-News)

Splitter didn’t change the outcome — the Spurs, for the fourth game in a row, faltered late — but he almost did. With the Spurs down six in the final two minutes, Splitter unfurled a series of up-fakes on LaMarcus Aldridge that one overexcited courtside observer compared to a Kevin McHale move.

It resulted in a basket and a foul and would have brought the Spurs within three had Splitter not badly missed the free throw.

Splitter, coach Gregg Popovich said, “picks things up quickly.” That includes the tendencies of opposing players.

“Even though I watched a lot of NBA games before I got here, it’s not the same as when you can get on the court and see them work,” said Splitter, who had 14 points and nine rebounds against Portland.

Hill, the Spurs’ fourth-leading scorer and highest-scoring reserve at 11.5 points per game, had lately fallen into a pattern of deference and unselfishness. Those are good qualities for a Red Cross volunteer, but not so much for a sixth man Popovich envisions as sort of a Ginobili-lite.

With Ginobili out for the second half in Memphis, and he and Parker out for all four quarters Monday, Hill had no choice but to look for his own shots, creating them out of whole cloth when necessary.

The result: a 30-point game against the Grizzlies, equaling a career high, followed by 27 points against Portland.

It marks the most prolific two-game stretch of Hill’s career.

“We’d like to continue to see George continue to play with that kind of scoring mentality,” Popovich said. “He’s good at it, and we need it.”

If Hill and Splitter can keep it up, the Spurs might have just discovered two more players who can turn a playoff series.

No GPS required.